Check me out, eh?! Mama's got herself an album cover. I should total print some vinyl.

So, the album is about to go live--but the process has been very stop-and-start and is not nearly as fancy is it may appear. As a small artist, you have to use all these funny third-party platforms to get your music up on Spotify and iTunes. And I got all excited about this new platform that I was going to use in order to do that, and then they sent out this crazy email this morning about them outsourcing that process and--you know what, this probably isn't very interesting to read.

Short summary: I am doing everything in my power to (hopefully legally) get this album into your earbuds as soon as possible. Naturally, you'll be updated along the way.

Which brings me the theme of the week: Just f*cking ship it.

For those of you who aren't 100% familiar with the phrase, "ship it" is common engineering lingo for pushing the button* that makes the most recent version of your website or product go out into the world. It's a phrase you'll hear a lot if you wander around a startup office.

As a mantra, I dig it. And I've gotten similar advice from other sources. Someone told me once that you're never actually finished recording an album--you just run out of time or money. Someone else said to me that if you're not a little bit embarrassed when you release an album (or a website or whatever), you probably waited too long.

At some point, you just gotta ship it.

Do we all know where I'm headed with this?

Over the weekend, I was helping a friend talk through an application she was sending out for a job she really wants. She's a designer. Her portfolio--in my opinion, the hardest part--is stunning. Her website is great. Her cover letter was coming together. She was pretty much ready to rock.

And then she told me she wanted to re-do her website and look over her portfolio again before she sent in her application.

I took a deep breath and I said, "Please just send it in. Now. Or Tuesday. Give yourself a deadline. Because how silly are you going to feel if you wait another three weeks, get everything ready and totally perfect, go to apply and--oh wait, they've already taken the job posting offline."

Just f*cking ship it.

You know that old Woody Allen quote about how 80% of success is just showing up, right? Or that Michael Jordan line about missing 100% of the shots you never take. It's all the same.

You have to do. And doing is often times disguised as pressing Send when you're not quite ready yet.**

Right. So. With that, I'm going to go back to figuring out the music business in 2016 and getting these songs all the way onto the internet.

#justshipit,Alexa

PS: Thank you so much to everyone who has forced a friend to sign up for this newsletter! It means the world to me to see a growing subscriber list of enthusiastic readers. You guys rule.

*I know, engineers. Don't start with me today.

**THIS IS NOT THE SAME THING AS NOT SPELL-CHECKING. More on that another time.